Huh. Turns out, if you write a little article about Jane Austen you get some awfully odd emails

La Mathilde is seven. We love her more than sleep itself.

Are YOU serious about your high quality Christmas bread and pastries? Join the 7am queue, pal

Seven years ago, getting ready for bed, I set this alarm on my phone. Still can’t bear to delete it.

Happy Christmas Eve Eve from me and this spiced pomegranate mezcal margarita

Jingle Bell Heist is TERRIFIC. I laughed! I felt warm and cosy! I genuinely gasped at the twist!

Christmas came early when this pleasingly chunky lad plopped through the letterbox this morning. So good to hold in my hand the proof of, well, the best part of a decade’s work, really. Hope @bsecs.bsky.social members enjoy reading about Mary & gang over a festive tipple. bsky.app/profile/soph...

A wonderful write-up of the best exhibition I saw in 2025- AUSTEN & TURNER: A COUNTRY HOUSE ENCOUNTER at Harewood House. If you couldn’t make it to Leeds to see this extraordinary “what if…?” extravaganza in person, then reading this article is very much the next best thing.

My book on the collections of Francis Douce (1757-1834) was published yesterday. It has been a long time in the making, but I've loved every minute working on such incredible material. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

😍We are rejoining Erasmus. Official announcement tomorrow😍 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Alas! Wonderful producer emails to say that the Baronetage stuff didn’t make the cut on Front Row… but you can still tune in to hear me disagreeing with John Mullan about Austen’s nastiness and giggling hysterically/fangirlishly at Harriet Walter’s readings

To celebrate the annual switching on of the out-of-office: chocolate martini.

Also for the Austen 250th, @chloewigstonsmith.bsky.social and I are thrilled our article about Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter is published today in a very special issue of Persuasions On-Line. Working on this exhibition was the highlight of my year. jasna.org/publications...

Outlandishly, I'll be discussing this research (& other things) on Front Row this evening with Samira Ahmed, Tessa Hadley, Kamila Shamsie, Harriet Walter, & John Mullan. Unless I end up on the cutting room floor, which given the company would be entirely understandable. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Happy 250th birthday, Jane Austen! Why not celebrate by reading my hot-off-the-press lil piece which sheds new light on the composition process for JA's greatest novel (no questions, sit yo ass down) PERSUASION. It involved archival sleuthing, so was cracking fun to write. jasna.org/publications...

Considering taking up religion specifically to believe in hell.

Oh heeeey. I've just seen that my two research articles on Mary Hamilton in this volume are now available via open access (pre-print versions) on @uoyopenres.bsky.social research repository! At time of initial skeeting, they were still embargoed. Go get 'em! (or, as ever, message me for PDFs). (1/3)

WINTER Term Card: We are excited to share our seminar schedule for next term! Our slate of speakers cover a range of #18thc British history topics. Registrations are now open (with paper abstracts) at the link below 👎 @ihr.bsky.social @ihrlibrary.bsky.social www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Excuse me while I have a little lie-down, because I got to work with Harriet bloody Walter today

Uk academia is far, FAR, from perfect, but I am eternally grateful that by pure virtue of my powerlessness I do not receive demands like this, and then peer pressure from colleagues to show “grace” by acquiescing to them.

at a certain level of any creative or intellectual collaborative job the main task is sin-eater: to fix what you can and get blamed for what you can’t, secretly knowing how much worse it would have been if you hadn’t done what you did.

I try not to talk about this much, but in case someone else needs to hear it… Being a carer to a loved one is incredibly hard physically and mentally and unbearable sometimes. Doing paid work on top of that can sometimes feel impossible no matter how much of a privilege it is to have the option.

There is an English major writing for The Onion.

Sorry but has anyone seen the video for the Pretenders 2000 Miles? Because I just saw it for the first time and…

From 3 February 2026, the special exhibition "Samurai" will be at the British Museum. I've had a lot of fun working on this together with the brilliant Rosina Buckland. If you happen to be in London, and feel that you need more samurai in your life, do drop by! www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/...

It’s @ottolenghi.bsky.social Spicy Nuts Season! Real ones know.

the reason its bad to run universities like businesses is that almost all businesses fail on any reasonable timeline of evaluation. hudson's bay made it the longest and even they only got to about half an oxford of longevity

Is this not how everyone enjoys eating pizza, or

Coming soon: Disability and the Gothic: The Nineteenth Century. Cambridge Gothic Elements series. Publication date is 24 March 2026 www.cambridge.org/core/element...

🚨NEW POLICY ANNOUNCEMENT🚨 All Evri executives to have their Christmas presents delivered by Evri, to see how they like it. Love Christmas. Vote Binface.

Working on my talk for this, next week. Please come if you are free, in London, and fancy a glass of wine with me at the BL.

I named my fists Common and Sense because I'm about to bring the Paine

Creative writer/teacher friends of Bluesky! I’m looking for good pieces of ‘craft’ writing that discuss strategies for implementing peer feedback on creative work. What to take, what to leave. how to make the most of the dialogue, but also take responsibility for the final decision. Any tips?

Never gets old.

This looks absolutely epic

Still reeling from the Stanford report on Brexit. Reduced GDP by up to 8% and investment by as much as 18%. The UK Treasury would have £40 billion more each year if Britain had remained in the EU. Devastating self-immolation.

'Ahead of the autumn budget on 26 November, Universities UK (UUK) has calculated that funding per student for teaching in 2025-26 is at 64 per cent of the level it was in 2015-16.' 1/3

This is me, by the way. I'm the one in my family with indefinite leave to remain. The father, the husband who would be hived off under these proposals.

This has been such an incredible experience in interdisciplinary collaboration, and I've learned so much. I hope that you all enjoy reading about Mary and her crew! Do get in touch with any questions about access etc.

But most of all, to @historyhannahb.bsky.social for leading the project and to my wonderful Co-Investigators and co-editors David Denison and @nuriyabo.bsky.social for the teamwork. Nuria in particular has been the powerhouse behind this volume, and we'd be nowhere without her.

Enormous thanks to all our contributors, our wonderful reviewers, and the AHRC for funding the research project without which this volume would never have been possible. Also to star general editor Emrys Jones at JECS, and all open access funders.

Closing up this v interdisciplinary special issue is Yoko Iyeiri, with an analysis of how Hamilton's enormous archive shows linguistic change, specifically in relation to the development of the adverb. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Now Anne-Christine Gardner w/ 'Self-Corrections as Indexes of Social Relationships: Observations From Mary Hamilton's Correspondence With Frances Burney (1783–1789)'. Anne & I take complementary approaches to the same material: IMHO it's a fun conversation! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Then, we have @voloshkova.bsky.social with 'Mary Hamilton, Manuscript Poetry, and the Bluestocking Network: Promoting Hannah More, Ann Yearsley, and Anne Hunter', investigating Hamilton as promoter of poetry. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Next, it's Mascha Hansen with 'The Literary Court: Reading Queen Charlotte'. This article investigates the literary cultures revolving around Queen Charlotte, in some of which Mary Hamilton took part. It's our last gold OPEN ACCESS contribution! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Then, er, it's me again! In 'A ‘generous Rival’? Mary Hamilton and Frances Burney', I use archival & digital approaches to solve the mystery of why Hamilton loved Burney but Burney loathed Hamilton. The answer is one to which many novelists may relate. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In '‘I was so ill, and so low…’: Women, Mental Health, & Strategies of Care in The Mary Hamilton Papers', @annafranjam.bsky.social explores how space, sociability & letter-writing were understood as strategies of self care by female correspondents in the Hamilton archive. Another OPEN ACCESS baby!

Next up is 'Franks & Friendship: Eighteenth-Century Postal Practices in The Mary Hamilton Papers' by Christine Wallis, who uses evidence from TMHP to explore how postage and franking aided correspondents' politeness and identity work. It is also OPEN ACCESS! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Next is 'The Tip of the Iceberg: Reading Practices in Mary Hamilton's Archive, 1783–1784', by @crulph.bsky.social & I. A data-driven dive into what, how, where, when & with whom Mary Hamilton read, & reflection on DH methodologies applied to ms life writing. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

ALSO OPEN ACCESS is our 1st article, 'Reconstructing Mary Hamilton's Social Networks', by David Denison & Tino Oudesluijs, who present an innovative method for reconstructing social networks from ms letters-connecting not just correspondents but mentionees too onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...